Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship

Use these resources to validate the need underlying your business idea.
Please contact infoservices@hbs.edu to schedule a consultation with a Baker librarian.

Consumer Lifestyle & Buying Power

Good for finding granular data on income, purchasing power, and lifestyle of American consumers.

Suggested Resources

Books

• American Incomes: Demographics of Who Has Money

• Who we are: Blacks

• Who's Buying by Race and Hispanic Origin

• Racial and Ethnic Diversity: Asians, Blacks, Native Americans, and Whites

Nielsen reports on the African American Consumer

Search using keywords African American or Black

RKMA

Consumer Behavior 2019-2020 report has a section on African-American consumers.

Consumer & Business Demographics

U.S. Census Survey Data

Good for finding demographic profiles of potential target customers including jobs and occupations, educational attainment, employment status, school enrollment, health, housing, and more.

Suggested Resources

United States Census Bureau

Demographic characteristics, total population, social, and economic census data useful for determining market size.

American Community Survey

An ongoing monthly U.S. Census Bureau statistical survey of approximately 250,000 addresses seeking data on age, sex, race, family and relationships, disabilities, where residents work and how they get there, where residents live and how much they pay for essentials, income and benefits, health insurance, education, and veteran status. See list of survey subjects.

United States Census: Business and Economy

Business and industry economic statistics by geography and by survey/frequency.

United States Census: County Business Patterns

Annual economic data by industry in small areas of the country.

Mapping Tools

Good for finding tables and maps that include industry-wide or regional statistics, such as the number of companies by employment size and level of specialization, classified by the industry of the establishment.

Suggested Resources

SimplyAnalytics

Generate tables and maps based upon desired United States data, including population, age, race, income, employment, and education.

Social Explorer

Access census data for the United States through the use of interactive maps and reports.
American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates (available down to the Census Block Group geography) data plus Social Explorer tables which include easy reports with age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, household relationship, place of birth, education, employment status, income, tenure, cost and value of housing, year structure built and other data.

Geospatial Revolution: Food Deserts

This video segment from Penn State Public Broadcasting’s Geospatial Revolution describes one Philadelphia community’s successful efforts to use GIS technology to identify and solve the problem of lack of access to healthy, fresh nutritious food.